Don't You Forget About Me Read online

  ‘Go on, Rav, go ahead,’ Clem says and Rav coughs into his fist and glares.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pussy! OK if neither of you are going to tell her, I will. Georgina—’

  ‘Oh God you KNEW he was seeing other people?!’ I cry.

  The thought is a stab wound, not because Robin was flaunting it, but if they kept this secret from me, this grisly episode has damaged much more than it deserves to.

  ‘No of course we didn’t know, you moo!’ Clem says. ‘Why would we know and not tell you?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know,’ I mumble.

  ‘Georgina,’ Clem portentously draws breath, ‘We all thought Robin was a massive, tremendous, glaringly obvious arsehole. What on EARTH have you been thinking?’

  ‘Oh?’ I say, dumbly. ‘You didn’t like him?’

  Rav coughs again and Jo stares down into her cider.

  ‘“Didn’t like” doesn’t quite cover it. Actively abhorred is closer to the mark.’

  ‘Clem!’ Rav says. ‘Fuck’s sake, she’s just caught him in bed with someone else.’

  ‘Relevant to the abhorring.’

  After a very tense few seconds of silence, I start laughing. They look shocked for a second and then start laughing too.

  ‘I thought you were going to burst into tears and slap me,’ Clem says, clutching her chest.

  ‘No, I only want to slap myself,’ I say.

  Jo puts a hand on my arm. ‘Not that this isn’t awful for you. I’m so sorry for what’s happened.’

  I pat back. ‘I’m well rid.’

  ‘Did he really claim you were in an open relationship?’ Clem says, her immaculate vermillion MAC lip curling in disgust. Clem dresses like a member of Pulp, only better: dyed red hair in flapper bob, head to toe vintage, pointed retro nails. She’s very pointy, in looks and nature.

  ‘He said he thought we were free to sleep with other people. Which begs the question why he didn’t mention doing it, ever.’

  ‘He was sneaking around like your bog-standard shitbag and now he’s gaslighting you.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Making you think you’re going mad, making you think it was your problem.’

  ‘It’s true we never said “What are the rules on sleeping with other people”. He had said he didn’t believe in monogamy as the only way to live, but you know … I didn’t think it directly applied. He’d met my friends, my family. God’s sake, how are you meant to be totally go with the flow, ultra modern, no pressure and find this basic stuff out at the same time?’

  ‘This is the gaslighting. You’re questioning yourself. It’s him who’s put the goalposts on wheels.’ Clem sucks on the straw in her gin and tonic, then grimaces. ‘He called you “the Waitress”. He never missed a chance to act like he was better than you.’

  ‘I thought he was being … I don’t know, light-hearted.’

  Clem widens her eyes and Rav and Jo still can’t meet mine and I realise this is Robin’s legacy – me uncomfortably working out how I accommodated and rationalised a lot of crappy behaviour that wasn’t remotely invisible to anyone else. And forever hating Ben & Jerry’s.

  ‘And you knew the woman?’ Clem says.

  ‘Lou’s his PA. They’d had a thing before but I thought it was long over by the time I was around.’

  Robin said he and Lou had slept together once, ‘in the day’, which I took to mean a long while ago rather than the timing, but who knows.

  I was taken aback when he mentioned it, as I’d spent a whole evening in her company thinking theirs was a friendly working relationship and it hadn’t once crossed my mind. Not that I’m saying attraction is an exact science but Lou is my complete physical opposite: long wild brown curly hair, a nose stud, knobbly knees in laddered patterned tights and a pair of silver glitter-crusted clumpy shoes. I’d taken an instant shine to her.

  It always causes some mental realignment when you discover someone has been where you have been.

  ‘She was cool about it, she’s really cool,’ Robin said, which I translated as: there were no consequences when I made it obvious it meant nothing.

  Robin had paused.

  ‘That’s not a thing for you, is it? Who’s been with who?’

  Yes it’s a thing for me like it’s a thing for pretty much everyone, that’s why there’s so many pop songs about it.

  ‘No! Just surprised that’s all. Wouldn’t have put you together.’

  ‘I dunno if you’d call it together. We ended up having a shower in an Ibis in Luton after a food fight, it seemed the next obvious step. Certainly not much other entertainment in Luton.’

  I flinched. In this moment, I definitely wasn’t the cool girl who wanted to hear the details and I didn’t like the way I felt Robin was trying to portray me as uptight and conventional. Even then, I could tell he was getting a kick out of it, congratulating himself as an erotic buccaneer, compared to Georgina the square.

  So when he added: ‘Would you rather I didn’t say, in future?’ I instantly replied: ‘No,’ and changed the subject.

  I didn’t ask if he’d mind if situations were reversed: when I unpick why, it’s because it’d mean either he was a hypocrite or he was totally without jealousy, which might be great for him but sort of flat for me.

  Why didn’t I tell Robin that his free love, free’n’easy approach wasn’t for me? I was scared of seeming like the parochial fiancée in Billy Liar, a woman stuck in the past who represented the opposite of everything exciting.

  And I was scared my expectations were never going to be met. But I’ve learned it’s better to have unrealistic expectations than none at all.

  We’re two drinks deep and having established I don’t mind if they slag him off, the Robin roast is now a marinated deep smoke over a pit of coals. By the end of the night he’ll be nothing but pulled brisket in buns.

  I feel a peculiar mix of gratitude and shame that I don’t feel sad, or any urge to defend him. It should be as if my heart’s been torn out and spat on. I only feel baffled, humiliated and empty. The empty was there before Robin, and he was a distraction from it.

  ‘Stand-up comics are often terrible people,’ Rav is saying. ‘Think about the personality type who decides to stand alone on a stage and say funny things and risk no one laughing. It’s for the maladjusted. The sad clown cliché. I’d rather spend time at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest than backstage at the Comedy Store.’

  ‘You might’ve told me this before I dated one,’ I say.

  ‘I was going to, but like a scrubber you disappeared off into the night with him before I could give you my professional opinion. Afterwards I judged it unwanted.’

  It was actually Rav’s fault that I’d met Robin in the first place. Rav had got us tickets for an open mike night. Robin was the last act, and by far the best. He did an excerpt of his show, I’m Not Being Funny But. It was much more of a storytelling style than those who’d leaned on the mike stand and chucked out one-liners, which got tiring after a while.

  Afterwards we found ourselves in a group in a late-night hotel bar with him and two of the other acts, a turquoise-haired plus-size woman dressed as a fighter plane pin-up, and a depressive man from Solihull who wore a pork-pie hat. I had finally felt part of a Sheffield creative quarter.

  Robin was tall, with a mop of telephone cord-like hair and small, shrewd blue eyes that contrasted with his red tartan shirt. He’d paced the stage rubbing his head, radiating a nervy energy. I could still smell the sweat from performance on him.

  I had realised I was excited to meet him. He felt like something different from the usual men I encountered. Going places. Things to say. Knew what he was doing. I decided to wait for my moment to get his attention.

  Robin held his mobile horizontal at chin level – a sign of a right tit I should have recognised, if ever there was one – and read a review aloud to his agent. They’d started the tour in London two nights previous, and apparently a verdict had just dropped.

&nbs
p; ‘McNee has an acute ear for the casual linguistic stupidities that infect daily life. He tries on a Stewart Lee-ish irascible rancour towards celebrities, his professional competitors, and even his audience, but it gradually slips over the line from knowingly self-parodic to plain self-indulgent … he becomes the very blowhard he seeks to send up. His ego is a drunk driver, but if his better instincts take control of the wheel, he could be something quite dazzling. You tell me, Al, is that praise or not?’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes I know, I’m asking you which of those two ways you take it.’

  Pause.

  ‘… Fair enough. I want to fold this cutting up and insert it into “Lee Hill” using a litter-picking claw.’

  Pause.

  ‘No I know Chortle is a website and there isn’t a hard copy, you might be missing the point.’

  He hung up. Everyone was quiet. I wasn’t nervous, mainly due to two powerful drinks that tasted like evil jam, with fat Morello cherries on sticks in them.

  ‘A review with the words superb, dazzling, and “acute ear”. I’d take it,’ I say.

  Robin looked at me.

  ‘What about my ego being a pissed driver?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You can’t do it without ego. There’s no way Richard Pryor or … Lenny Bruce didn’t have ego. It’s right up there with demons. Ego and demons. It’s to making art what eggs and bacon are to making breakfast.’

  Robin stared.

  ‘Wow. Yes. And you are?’

  Introductions were made, champagne was ordered on someone’s tab and the night was properly underway.

  ‘You’re a writer?’ Robin said, with one arm slung round the velvet banquette, in a way that meant it was sort of slung round me.

  ‘Hah! No. Who told you that?’

  ‘Your advice to me sounded like one writer to another …?’

  I glowed. This was one of the best things I’d ever heard.

  ‘… That said, you’re a bit too healthy for it. You don’t have the black coffee and fags face. You look like you leave the house and get fresh air.’

  I knew I was being hit upon, but my blood alcohol level and the bass-line in a Prince song were in harmony, and I was happy to be flattered.

  ‘I’m a waitress.’

  ‘Ah! That’s cute.’ (There it was, that tone. Clem was right.)

  I’d nearly said: I’d like to be a writer but I knew the next question would be, what have you written? and the answer is a big old nothing, bar a diary that I was once quite proud of, so I didn’t.

  ‘I have a research question, you can help me with my act,’ Robin said. ‘What’s it like being beautiful?’

  Over his shoulder, I could see Rav making a ‘gun to temple and firing’ gesture.

  Maybe in other circumstances I’d have groaned, but it felt like Robin was being refreshing and surprising. And you know, it’s never the worst thing to hear.

  ‘I’m not beautiful.’

  I resisted the urge to fuss at my hair, but held my stomach in.

  ‘You clearly are.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘So what it’s like being beautiful, is thinking you’re not beautiful?’

  I laughed. ‘Erm. If you insist.’

  ‘That’s a let-down. I’d thought it’d be like being a Disney heroine where you can make the pots and pans clean themselves and the broom dance.’

  Rav leaned over minutes later and whispered: ‘I bet you can make his broom dance, if you follow.’

  I laughed and realised I was interested in someone for the first time in ages.

  I did something that night I never do: as Robin reappeared and slid back in next to me, refilling my glass: I thought, I’m having you. I’m taking you home.

  After whispered I like you / I like you toos and kissing by the taxi rank we ended up having very mediocre intercourse in a room at The Mercure, as Robin couldn’t even be bothered to travel back to his flat. My big first-night-sex adventure ended with me bouncing around on top of a very drunk, semi-comatose comedian who kept groaning: ‘Talk dirty to me, Georgina the waitress, talk dirty! Be filthy and nasty!’

  Nasty?

  I shouted: ‘Shag me, you curly-haired blowhard!’

  Rav is still musing Robin’s shortcomings.

  ‘You know, I didn’t spend enough time around Robin to diagnose the Dark Triad, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘That sounds like a hip-hop group.’

  ‘Narcissism, manipulation, lack of empathy,’ Rav says, counting them off on his fingers, then grabbing for the open bag of Walkers. ‘The people who can reel you in and spit you out, without a second’s guilt.’

  Rav is a counsellor. You’d never peg the skinny Asian lad with the Morrissey quiff and the discreetly peacocky clothing as such. He is coolly analytical and unsentimental and probably the ideal person to have around if you get yourself involved with a technicolour fountain of dysfunction like Robin. Though there’s now been enough alcohol-fuelled deconstruction I think we might’ve turned your run-of-the-mill selfish arse into a Shakespearean villain.

  Jo chews the inside of her lip.

  ‘I thought Robin was very idio … idio …’

  ‘Idiotic?’ Clem says.

  ‘No … like, idi …’

  ‘Idi Amin?’ Rav says.

  ‘No, a word for individual that isn’t individual!’

  ‘Idiosyncratic?’ I say.

  ‘Yes! I didn’t like how rude he was to you though.’

  I frown. ‘I honestly thought it was teasing.’

  I prize my capacity to take a joke. It’s painful to think my friends were cringing for me, and that I don’t know where the line should be.

  Clem purses her mouth.

  ‘And whenever you gave an opinion about anything, Robin was straight in there with “maybe the people who disagree have a point” or “maybe you were too touchy”. I spotted it right away as a psycho ex used to do it to me. Constant undermining. They don’t want you to trust yourself on anything.’

  Oh, God. She’s right. At first I was bowled over by Robin’s iconoclastic take on my life – yet the solution, now I think about it, was always that I should fix my attitude and stop being such a princess. Wow, I’ve chosen a smart cookie and a challenge here, I congratulated myself, look at how he’ll just come right out and say it. Not: why is this bloke never on my side?

  I gave Robin so much leeway because I thought he was ‘Other’ – an emissary from a cleverer, more rarefied and liberal world than that of Georgina the Waitress. Anything I disliked was down to having not caught up with the latest trend yet, not being an artist with an artist’s temperament. I realise, as per the Lou conversation, he was always subtly reinforcing the idea I was two steps behind.

  ‘He’s this loaded posh boy and his idea of showing you a good time was you trekking out to the flat his parents bought him to get high and listen to his drivel,’ Clem says. ‘Did he ever take you anywhere?’

  Ah. No. Again, I told myself that was a sign of how gloriously unmaterialistic he was – not short of funds but uninterested in spendy dinners, showing off, roostering round town, trying to bedazzle me with his wealth. He wanted to talk about cerebral things. (Himself and his work.)

  I’m sucking down wine fast and writing myself an internal memo about how an athletic ability to find the positive – the sort that’s drilled into girls especially: be grateful, smile! – isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes you should ask yourself why you’re having to.

  And I’m reflecting on other signals I successfully blocked out. The first time I properly introduced Robin to the gang was Clem’s thirtieth. I’d thought Clem spent the whole night on the other side of the room to circulate, that Rav got lordly drunk due to the units in a pitcher of Dark and Stormy and that Jo was quiet due to pre-menstrual issues. Meanwhile, a visibly bored Robin said he ‘wasn’t good in crowds’.

  I grimace into my glass:

  ‘I hope you don’t think I dated a
tosser because he’d been on television once or twice.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Rav says, ‘We think you dated a tosser as you thought he was something out of the ordinary, am I right? Which, y’know. He was …’

  Jo adds: ‘It’s not as if the rest of us are doing any better.’

  I wasn’t going to say it but it’s not usually me who brings a cuckoo into the nest. My few boyfriends in my twenties have been albeit-unthrilling, unsuited-to-me, but nice enough guys.

  Meanwhile Rav’s carousel of internet dates end up being hard to distinguish from his therapy list – ‘Only I can’t charge for my time’ – Jo is long-term hung up on the charismatic neighbourhood rotter, Shagger Phil, and Clem believes romantic love is a concept designed to subdue and enslave humanity. She’s rarely seeing anyone long enough for us to meet him.

  Rav goes to give Clem a hand at the bar for round three and Jo, from under her blunt, glossy brown fringe – her current dip-dyed style is two thirds cappuccino shade vs one third cappuccino foam (she’s a hairdresser) – says: ‘You’re coping very well. I hope we’ve not been too full on.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Not at all. I’m appalled by myself to be honest. I’m wondering if he’d not done this, how long I’d have gone on telling myself we made a good couple. Only we were never a couple.’

  The excitement of the night and the adrenaline of unmasking Robin’s audacious act is fading, and I’m left with a hollowed-out feeling inside.

  ‘You were! A couple, I mean.’

  ‘We weren’t, Jo. I glommed on to someone I thought was cool.’ I rub my temples and resist the urge to bang my head on the table. ‘I didn’t feel feelings, that’s the worrying part. I’m wondering if I’ll ever actually fall in love with anyone now. Perhaps this is it. Least worst options and growing the fuck up.’

  I’ve entered the maudlin stage of red wine soakedness.

  ‘You will find someone! You could have your pick, you really could.’

  I hesitate, worrying at the beer mat in front of me. You can say more to someone you’ve known for twenty years, who knows the bones of you. Who knows where you came from.

  ‘I don’t know if there’s anyone I want to pick. I’ve never fallen for anyone …’ I plough on, unable to meet her eye, reckless in drink: ‘Well, maybe once. When very young and stupid. But turns out it didn’t mean anything.’